


Onmund

by pagesandpetrichor



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Miscarriage, Oneshot, Onmund was my first Skyrim husband and he does not get enough love, Romance, Spans their lifetimes, Spoiler alert: everyone dies in the end, also this thing is chock-full of hamilton references for no reason in particular, but in a poetic way, im having a weird day okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23465026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pagesandpetrichor/pseuds/pagesandpetrichor
Summary: A short fic that tells the story of Onmund and the Dragonborn
Relationships: Dovahkiin | Dragonborn/Onmund, Female Dovahkiin | Dragonborn/Onmund, Onmund (Elder Scrolls)/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 15





	Onmund

**Author's Note:**

> Eliana was my first Dragonborn and she married Onmund and it gave me a lot of feelings so I wrote this when I have so many other things to do.

~.~

He didn’t know when it started. Only that one day the looks of derision that she usually reserved for him had turned into something softer.

He was quite convinced that she hated him. And maybe she had. He’d hoped that the Nord with flames in her hair and oceans in her eyes was not so proud as the rest of their kinfolk. He was wrong. Eliana laughed at him when she returned his family amulet, amused and disdainful that he had passed a task to her that he had been incapable of doing himself. He’d reddened considerably and embarrassment had kept him from speaking much with her after that.

She taunted him in their lessons, always with some critique on his form or his inferiority to J’zargo’s skill in Destruction. Never mind that  _ she _ didn’t even know the spell for chain lightning.

Perhaps it started after the dragon attack in the courtyard. He and Breylna had been lounging on the steps reading in the relative warmth of the winter sun when a wingspan as large as the bridge connecting them to Winterhold blocked out the sun. Breylna was useless, poor thing, but Onmund had managed to get a few shots in with the others, searing a gaping hole through it’s right wing with a firebolt. Perhaps Eliana had smiled at him that night over dinner. Perhaps not.

No matter what time it happened, he had never looked at her with the same disdain as she held for him. He couldn’t help it. Even though she evidently resented restoring his amulet, she had helped him greatly. And she seemed willing to help anyone, as contradictory as that seemed. He watched with trepidation while Breylna had cast spell after spell at Eliana until the girl fell ill, and then was turned into a cow. It might’ve been funny if he wasn’t so concerned. He expected Eliana to rage and turn the spell onto the poor Dunmer but she had only consoled and comforted her when righted to her natural state. Onmund was impressed by the kindness she paid his friend but said nothing to her on the subject.

The following month he was given to understand that J’zargo had also caused her a great deal of grief. He had wanted help testing those damned scrolls. Scrolls Onmund had continually refused to assist with because the Khajit may have been an accomplished mage but his arrogance would always make him dangerous. Eliana felt the force of that, wandering into the sleeping corners one evening with her robes burned and her left eyebrow gone. Unlike with Breylna, the kitty was thoroughly scolded though J’zargo bore it with amusement.

Omund didn’t get it. She went out of her way for these people, assisted the professors, was often gone on long missions to recover tomes for Urag, and yet she seemed to resent the favor that she had done him. 

But then after the dragon she had complimented him in passing during one of their many lessons on wards. He had been so surprised that he dropped the spell and was hit so thoroughly with the full force of Tolfdir’s frostbolt that he’d needed to cast a healing spell for the frostbite that set into his arm. 

Then she was gone for a long time. A time Onmund seemed actuely aware of which was stupid because she wasn’t even his friend. But his head turned every time a door opened and a part of him sighed in disappointment every time the figure was not her.

She was somber on her return four months later and immediately went to the Arch-Mage’s quarters and didn’t come out for hours. Onmund had tried to appear busy in the Arcanium or practice with J’zargo in the Hall of Elements but he was too filled with restless energy to be properly distracted. He was fitfully attempting to sleep when he heard the heavy door of the dormitories open and close and felt the subsequent rush of frigid air. He sat up in the dark and strained to see through the blue light across the room, the figure that entered the room closest to the door. He watched her light candles around the whole of the room and settle cross legged on the bed, writing in a journal. He laid back and pretended to be asleep.

Drifting and partially conscious, he thought he might have dreamed her voice in his doorway. Then there was a boot on his thigh, nudging him awake. He sat up immediately, clearing his throat and trying to maintain his composure as Eliana truly smiled at him in the darkened room. His bedroom, where she was. Where they were. Odd.

“Come with me.” She whispered conspiratorially, as though they had always been great friends. “I need your help.”

He seriously doubted that she would ever be in need of  _ his _ help seeing as how the Khajit was a superior mage and any of the professions could be called on for assistance but he followed her anyway. He grabbed his hood and a knapsack and his hunting bow (just in case) and let her pull him to the door. Once they were in the safe quiet of the snow and wind she pointed to the weapon, giggling.

“Really?”

“Just in case.” Then after a pause, because she was still walking and still had a grip on the arm of his robes. “Where are you taking me?”

“If I tell you it ruins the fun.”

He rolls his eyes but her eager mood is infectious. “Then by all means, lead the way.”

She led him into the great hall where the Eye of Magnus painted the room in blues and greens and when he turned to her it reflected in her eyes.

“Do you know what it is?”

He thought about it. Tolfdir had only mentioned it’s great and ancient power but otherwise Onmund hadn’t a clue.

“No.”

“Do you want to know where I’ve been these past few months?”

“If you care to tell me.”

She smiled what might have been a sad smile. It didn’t suit her. She wasn’t one to be pensive and sad, she was supposed to be lively and expressive. He didn’t tell her so.

“Urag sent me to gather more information on it. I’ve been over all of Skyrim and a little into Cyrodiil collecting every book and scroll that even mentions the thing. As it turns out, there’s not many alive, or many writings preserved, that can accurately tell what it even is. Some seem to think it’s an invention of the Dwemer, some that it’s derived from Juliannos, and others that it was the life's work of an ancient and powerful mage.”

“What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know.” She sits at one of the wooden benches that line the chamber. “I don’t think it matters. What everything agrees on is that it’s powerful. Too powerful for anyone to be in possession of really. Power that is begging to be abused and exploited. In the wrong hands this thing could tear Tamriel apart.”

He doesn’t know what to say. What’s worse is that even in the enormity of what she is telling him, the thing he concentrates on most is that  _ he _ is the one she has deigned to tell.

“So what now?”

“I don’t know.” She releases a long sigh. “Savos and the rest know about it. The Psijic Order contacted me. I don’t trust Ancano. I don’t know Onmund, I’ve been solely focused on this thing for months but I don’t have an answer.”

She seems so listless from her normal self and for the first time that day he notices how tired she looks. Her cheeks, cheekbones already high and proud as her Nordic birth, are sallow and gaunt. Her frame, previously curves beneath muscle, wide shoulders and hips, was thin and hardened. Not that he looked, before. As he frets about how to offer her any measure of comfort, she turns fully towards him on the bench, just the smallest return of fire in her.

“You have to be wondering why I’m confiding in you Onmund.”

“I am. I was convinced you hated me” 

She laughs a little and it does something wonderful in him. Something that feels like a Magelight spell behind his sternum.

“And I’m sorry for encouraging that illusion. On the contrary, Onmund, I think you’re worth more than the lot of this whole college.”

How does he respond to an admission that is so far from logic and reason? Blessedly, she saves him the embarrassment of forming a response by continuing.

“Yes, I lost a great deal of respect for you after the whole amulet business but you must understand that there was much lost because there was a great deal that existed in the first place.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re not presumptuous like the rest of them here. If I hear one more Altmer ask me if I’d like to learn a basic flames spell I might just fus-roh-dah them off of the bridge. And I like Breylna and J’zargo but they’ll never be good mages. Brelyna lacks self-confidence and J’zargo exceeds in it. But you, Onmund, you know yourself. You’re always striving to learn. You went against custom and your own family to be here and better yourself.”

She takes a long steadying breath and he notes the sudden color in her face.

“So I was disappointed that you didn’t settle the matter with Enthir yourself when I knew it to be well within your capability. But it was cruel of me to act the way that I did, after. I didn’t know so much then as I do now of Enthir’s character. I want to apologize.”

“Then all is forgiven. I’m not one to hold a grudge.”

“I know.” She said smilingly. “I had misjudged you at first. But after the whole dragon affair I realized that you were capable of handling yourself and, and perhaps-”

“Yes?”

“I was glad to have helped you.”

Fearful of the territory the conversation had led them to, he found a different subject.

“Did you really need my help with something?”

She grins at him and it restores the vigor to her face. “Yes, I do. I’m supposed to speak to the Augur of Dunlain in the Midden. Do you know it?”

“The Midden? I do, I’ll take you there.”

He is beside her for the rest of the whole ordeal. Though he hates traveling through the ruins of Mzulft, his preference for electrical majika proves especially useful against its mechanical occupants. He strives alongside Tolfdir and the Arch-Mage to battle Ancano. He lets Eliana cry into his robes when they bury Savor Aren’s body at sea. He rides a black gelding beside her spirited bay mare from Winterhold to the plains of Whiterun as they seek out the ruins of Labyrinthian. They set up camp in a sheltered alcove of rock only a few miles from the abandoned city. Onmund isn’t used to the warmth so far south and sets his bedroll outside his tent, under the canopy of stars and the light of Secunda with Masser’s retreating form only a little way beyond. It’s not quite as good as seeing the Aura Borialis from the walkway at the top of the college, but, surrounded by torchbugs and the delicate luminescence of luna moths, it’s a night he will remember. 

Eliana grooms her favored bay. She has been chatty and amicable since they left the college. He points it out to her and wishes he hadn’t because the words cause her to deflate.

“Its just nice to get away from it for a little bit, I didn’t ask for this you know.”

“I didn’t- I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you think of it where you’re trying not to. I get that it’s- that you don’t want-”

“Onmund?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.” 

They spread out on their bedrolls beneath the open sky. She lies on her back, arms bent up beneath her head, eyes closed and brow creased in worry.

“I think there’s a very good likelihood of our not surviving tomorrow.”

“I would go,” The words are tumbling out of his mouth before he’s hardly had a chance to think them. “If you stay somewhere safe, I would go recover the staff.”

“Oh Onmund.” She sits up on her knees, facing him while his wild thoughts gain momentum.

“You’re always being pulled into nonsense like this, let me go. I’m not trying to be the hero or anything. Just don’t put yourself in danger just this once.”

“Onmund.” He quiets at her defeated expression and the hand that has just grasped his. “You’re so sweet, you know that? But I have to, at least the Psijic Order say that I do. We go together.”

He could be agreeable to that. But something else has dawned on him. “You hate this. All these tasks and destiny being thrown on you. This Magnus business, being Dragonborn, always called on to help people you have no connection with.”

“Yes.” 

She is still clutching his hand in both of hers and he watches the trail of her fingers from the vein on his wrist down to his knuckles. He watches the slightest way that her face angles towards him. That if he leaned forward only a little, their noses would brush.

“But what do you want, Eliana?”

There is a sudden cry, a roar that shakes the ground itself as a shadow familiar to them both blots out the light of the twin moons. The dragon hovers to the south of them, pausing, and Onmund realizes that the words that seem to materialize around them are from the dragon. He doesn’t know what the beast says to Eliana, only that it makes her face contort in rage. Purple appears in one hand and orange in the other as she readies for battle. He does the same. 

Onmund calls on the familiar flow of majicka. He calls it up from somewhere, the pit of his belly, or perhaps his mind, or his soul, Oblivion, he didn’t know, only that it came to him easily, naturally, as it had when he was only five and burnt his father’s woodpile to the ground. Or like the day his father had taken him hunting and he’s felled the stag with a single bolt of lightning to the heart. He’d been proud of himself. A clean swift kill. His father had raged and forbidden him to ever do it again. But the call of the warm blue energy that filled him while thunderstorms formed at his palms was the closest thing to home he had ever felt.

The dragon emitted a piercing cry and then a blast of frost that freezes solid everything in its wake, turning the grass at his feet black. He rolls to take shelter behind a rock and fires at it. The bolt catches the dragon as it starts to circle, hitting the tail and enraging it all the more.

He thinks somewhere on the wind he can hear Eliana yelling. He strains and catches it  _ The wing! Hit the wing!  _ and he remembers the day in the courtyard.

Ward in one hand and chain lightning in the other, he hits it in the shoulder and as that shakes its balance, he does indeed hit the wing. The dragon recoils, shrieks- and lands.

Elinana is to his left, hands charged and at the ready, but she makes no move towards the beast. She nods at him as if to say  _ all yours _ .

He doesn’t know if his majicka will be strong enough to  _ kill _ the thing. Last time Phineas’s Dremora Lord had dealt the killing blow. But by Shor, he was going to try.

Now that it seems the thing is grounded for good, he switches the charge in his right hand. If the dragon uses frost, then naturally fire should be more effective against it? His estimation is correct and he dodges the blasts of cold while firing back flame until his majicka reserves are gone and he is panting and spent. But as he discharges the last fireball directly to the dragon’s snout something incredible happens. The thing slumps, the fire behind it’s eyes, something that felt old, felt like the stuff of legend to look at, died out.

Eliana is approaching, then brushing by him to stand in front of the corpse. He watches,  _ listens _ as a sound like a drumbeat seems to come from nowhere and everywhere. Like the fabric of the world around them has something to say. 

He had missed all of this last time trying to help Breylna up after she sustained a few burns.

And he wouldn’t make the mistake of missing this again. Like the legends his mother had told him at night, the great beast began to burn. Not from his flames, but something internal, as though the flesh knew that this was its natural end. And when the body began to emit fire and ash, it emitted something else too. Something visible but evidently ethereal, a whisper of light that left the dragon and flowed into the Dragonborn. 

She braced for the impact of it, letting the light and wind infuse into her. Then, as soon as it had begun, it was over.

She sighs, runs a hand over her face and mutters something that might have been _fucking_ _dragons_.

Onmund is rooted to the spot. “What was that?”

“Oh, that? I absorbed its soul.”

“You- you- what! You did what?”

“Its soul. It’s how I shout. Well, no, but it gives me the power to shout as only a Dovah can. Only a dragon’s soul can have the power to shout as a dragon.” And at the still incredulous look on his face, she adds. “You knew I was the Dragonborn.”

“But that was- bizarre. I guess. I don’t know what I expected but it wasn’t that.”

She rolled her eyes and grinned at him. “Well, how does it feel to slay your first dragon?”

He cannot help but mirror back her smile. “Pretty good. How many more do I need to catch your count?”

She laughs. “A lot. But there’s time and plenty more dragons.”

He likes the idea that there will be more of these adventures. That is, if they survive tomorrow.

They do survive. Barely. They are drained and dripping with sweat, majicka exhausted and ready to collapse when Morokei finally dies in a heap of ash. But they live to bring back the Staff. They live to defeat the anomalies, and Ancano, and right the wrongs done. The Eye is safely gone and, foreseeably, their world is safe. For now.

Eliana laughs when it seems they are serious about making her Arch-Mage. She heartily refuses, demonstrating her absolute inability to cast a basic alteration spell. No, she came there to learn and she hadn’t had much of a chance to do that yet. So, hesitantly but not undeservingly, Tolfdir took up the mantle Savor Aren left behind. 

He has hardly spoken to Eliana in all this. They’ve all been busy. There has been order to reset, friends to bury.

He settles into his bed in the dormitory, feeling much different from the last time he slept here. And sleep does claim him as he is tired like he’s never been before.

It’s a familiar scene, almost, when she wakes him. It is still night, very late, or he supposes very early, when she hovers in his doorway like a spectre. Her face is not resolute determination like it had been that other night. Onmund almost thought she looked sad.

Her hand raises with blue light, casts a muffle spell over the room and she asks him to do something about the door because she’s never been any good with alteration. He flicks his wrist and there is a haze like a curtain over the archway.

She sits beside him but only for a moment and then she is in his lap, arms around his neck and she sniffles against his shoulder. 

“Eliana?”

She shakes her head. “Will you just hold me, please?”

His heart aches for her. This strong, brilliant, beautiful woman who wants no part in her own life, who is followed by misfortune and death at every turn. She has no family he knows, friends that only stick around through duty or attachment to her status. 

A sudden certainty settles over him. That as long as it was in his power, he would never let her feel so broken and alone again. Only happy and free as she had been riding beside him across the prairie. Or laughing in the snow at their camp in the Pale, firelight and what he now knew as dragon souls in her eyes.

“Onmund.” Her voice is a whisper, a caress in its own right. His hand drifts to her cheek to wipe away the moisture there. “Onmund will you stay with me? Follow me doing Dragonborn stuff, fighting bad guys? You don’t hav-”

“Yes.”

She nods again, solemnly and her eyes find his.

She drags him to her by the front of his robe and her lips are searing, frantic. He does not know what to do with this desperation from her. He is the one who has done the longing and pining, surely, he thinks, this cannot be real. 

But she is real. She is very real, and warm, and her nails are sliding through his hair and her mouth is on his jaw. 

“Elie.” He is vaguely aware of the idea that he needs to tell her something but his sense steadily leaves him in the wake of her kisses. “Elie.” He tries again. 

“Onmund please.” Her voice is quiet, a plea. 

He reclaims her mouth, hands settling on her waist to keep her close. She tastes of static and ozone and snow and her lips are chapped against his. Her hands slide down to toy with the hair at his nape and she pulls back to breathe. Nose brushing his cheek, full lips parted, she shudders and he catches another tear with his thumb. 

“Would that I could fix it, Elie. Give you the life you deserve.”

“Onmund.” His resolve cracks in the way she says his name, hardly more than a murmur, her eyes shining at him under the blue glow. She shakes her head with the slightest smile. Her hands creep back up to his unruly locks, then to his cheeks. She kisses his lips, once softly. “You do.” Her shaking hands glide over the soft fabric covering his torso to the tie of his robes. 

There is only her in the soft glow of magelight in their little corner of Nirn. He thinks he knew her well before, better than anyone likely but now he knows it is the truth. He knows the way she sighs, the way she blossoms, the way she sleeps. Long after she has been lost to dreams, her head tucked into his shoulder, he speaks into the quiet of the room.  _ I love you.  _

He will tell her, in the morning, and every morning, that he will hold the broken pieces of her if she will do the same for him. 

His tiny twin bed is not really big enough for two but intertwined as they are, a mess of arms and legs in the aftermath, her steady breaths hitting his collarbone, he thinks that it will do just fine.

Once things at the college are settled and a sense of normalcy has returned, she proposes a trip to Riften. There are a few things she wants to buy that one could never hope to find in Winterhold and he has never seen the Rift. They ride side by side, protect each other from bears and wolves, clear out a bandit camp on their way. At night they share a bedroll and, beneath the expanse of stars, discover the constellations of one another. 

He finds that although he has always been a creature of cold, living his youth in Eastmarch and then at the college, he likes the close, sticky warm of Riften in summer. He likes the dense forests of hardwoods rather than the evergreens he is used to. He likes the way the sum gleams off of Lake Honrich, and the carps and spadetails that leap at the surface of the water. 

The city is alright, if not a little dingy. But Eliana was not wrong that they had a wide assortment of goods. Oddities from Morrowind, weapons and armor from a master craftsman, all manner of elixirs and strange trinkets from a man everyone purported as a scam artist. It was more people and excitement than he was used to but he liked it.

While she conversed with one of the merchants at a stall, he wandered to the blacksmith. There were racks and racks of weapons, things they never really bothered with. Yet, while she’d teased him that day he’d gone with his bow, it hadn’t escaped his notice that she’d begun wearing a scabbard at her hip. _Just_ _in_ _case_.

But that was a simple steel sword, mass produced for the military. The Dovakiin of legend deserved better. 

And Balimund had better. Every type of material, every manner of blade. It was silly maybe, but it was the Elven shortsword that most drew his attention. He knew of Eliana’s distaste for the Thalmor but she was not so prejudiced as to turn up her nose at a good sword. And this one was more than that, lightweight and razor sharp, buzzing with the energy of enchantment.

He held it awkwardly behind his back as she rejoined him in the square. She carried her own purchase, wrapped in brown paper. When she tried to see behind him he only turned so his front was facing her.

“Onmund!”

He grinned wolfishly, quickly backpedaling away from her and shaking his head. “It’s a surprise and you’re trying to ruin it!”

She was ready to resort to tackling him but the angry clearing of a throat from the hostile woman at one of the stalls subdued her.

He doesn’t let her see until they are in their room in the inn. They present their gifts at the same time and her reaction is a squeal of delight. Just as he had hoped.

He hadn’t expected what she had given him, though. A set of expert destruction robes, shimmering with enchantment.

“Elie, these are incredible. But it’s too much, what did these _cost_? I can’t-”  
She kisses him to shut him up, a habit that he does not mind at all and soon the awaiting dinner downstairs and exorbitant expense of the gifts are forgotten. But then as she leans over him, something metal collides with his chin.

“Ow.”

“Sorry.” But she does not sound it, at all. And she doesn’t move to tuck the offending piece of jewelry back into her tunic. Finally it dawns on him just what he’s looking at. Aquamarine and copper, an intricate design artfully crafted.

“An amulet of Mara?”

“Interested in me, are you?” She giggles.

“Well yes,” He returns the conspiratorial smile. “Are you interested in me?”

She finds his lips again briefly. “Yes. Yes I am.”

They give their friends a week to reach Riften. Onmund wrote his family, not including a date, or the fact that he was marrying the Dragonborn. Only that he was to be married and he hoped they were well. The stiff, short nature of the letter made it obvious that he had no wish to see them, and had no invitation for further correspondence. 

As it was they did not hurt for guests. J’zargo and Breylna, Eliana’s housecarl Lydia, and a multitude of others, most of which Onmund didn’t know, turned out for them. It was a fine day, the 16th of Hearthfire, warm with long, lingering sunlight for the reception after in the square, with a hint of breeze that brought with it the smell of sea and salt and fish.

He had never seen Eliana in a dress before that day but she looked radiant in the cobalt blue that matched her eyes. He wore the robes she had bought for him.

He thought their life might fade into some normality after that. And though they bought a house in Falkreath, they didn’t live there. No, for the next two years they didn’t have time to think of building a house or a life together. There were dragons to slay, and an Elder Scroll to find, Alduin to defeat. He stood beside her through all of it. He watched in misery as Odahviing carried his wife to a place he could not follow. He, a farmboy from Eastmarch, had a place at the Jarl’s table while they waited. Lydia sat beside him, equally miserable and frustrated at being so useless.

He was there when she returned, caught her as she stumbled into him. She was tired, she said. She wanted to go home.

They didn’t go home. With the world saved, there was a war that could now really get going in earnest. 

She had waffled for years between both parties, knowing that pledging her allegiance on either side would be the tipping point for them. And finally after long deliberation, the two Nords threw their lot in with the Imperials. 

Onmund didn’t care for Tulius but even less for Ulfric.  _ Skyrim belongs to the Nords _ . But it didn’t. He thought of J’zargo and Breylna, of Rayya, Talen-Jai and Keerava. Skyrim belonged to no one but herself. And while he would mourn their loss of liberty, of Talos, they couldn’t continue squabbling amongst themselves while the Aldmeri Dominian watched on happily. And Onmund would not let his beloved Skyrim be a pawn in a political game. 

So, in red and steel, they fought. And somehow, in the smoke and blood and sweat of Windhelm, they won. 

Then they finally, finally went home. 

Lakeside was little more than a hut and a bed when they returned to it but that would soon change. They stopped traveling. They didn’t seek out treasure in the depth of Nordic ruins. They didn’t fight Falmer in the glowing blue reaches of Skyrim’s caves. They stayed away from giant’s camps, they went out of their way to  _ avoid _ bandit camps. It was strange and new and oddly exciting to be ordinary.

They worked endlessly. They learned to forge iron fitting and nails. They ordered lumber. They purchased livestock and chickens from a farmer in Falkreath. They planted a vegetable garden beside the house.

In the evenings Onmund began to read again, the same tomes he had researched at the college. They were on a type of magic that had fallen out of style, one that some speculated had never really existed. He wanted to find out.

Onmund worried his wife would be restless in domesticity. She wasn’t. He remembered Angier’s parting words;  _ Now it is up to you to decide what to do with your power and skill. Will you be a hero whose name is remembered in song throughout the ages? Or will your memory fade from history, unremembered? _

Onmund knew Eliana had never asked to be a hero.

Still she  _ was _ a hero to many. Not least of all to Sofie. The girl had been nearly frozen and nearly dead, orphaned in Windhelm when they came across her. That she would come live with them was decided immediately. She was bright and quick and eager to learn a few spells. She followed Elie through the garden. She called him Da.

Their domestic felicity was broken when a letter came, just as the west wing was being completed. Eliana was being called away to Markarth by a “friend”. Onmund had nearly forgotten that she was still the Dovahkiin and still one of Tulius’s chief officers and Skyrim would always be imploring her for help.

Onmund didn’t like her going alone but someone needed to stay with Sofie. And Eliana could handle herself. He knew that. But he got uneasy after a week without a letter and after another week he was packing his traveling bags. He asked Sofie to be good for Rayya, told her that they loved her, that they would be back soon.

He rode the old cart horse harder than he should have and had to switch mounts in Hrolden. He knew as soon as he reached Markarth that something was very, very wrong. Wary eyes followed him and silence fell when he walked past. 

Inns were always the best place to get information so that was where he went first. It only took a few questions for the bartender to assure him that Eliana had indeed been there.

“And who’s asking?” The man eyed him suspiciously.

Exasperated, Onmund felt the tingle of electricity in his palm. “Her husband.”

Wrong answer. The guards actually  _ detained _ him after that and he was bound and taken to Understone Keep where he was kept under watch. 

Prison. He learned they had thrown her in prison for asking questions. He wondered that they hadn’t done the same with him but something seemed to be brewing. There were guards and important-looking people constantly walking past his door in the keep, and his guard looked as green as his cuirass, fidgeting and shifting his eyes to the hallway constantly.

Onmund had to crack a smile, knowing Eliana had to be at the heart of all this unrest somehow. Despite the present circumstances, his worries lessened. She would likely be making a break soon. 

Healing spell in one hand and flames in the other, he burned off the rope that kept his hands bound and waited.

Only hours later the alarm sounded throughout the city and his guard along with all the others, went running out of the keep. Onmund followed at a distance. Outside, the stone walkways were swarmed by what Onmund could only assume were barbarians. Dozens of men and women clad in leather and animal skins wearing headdresses of antlers flooded the streets, aiming for the main entrance. But if that was their destination they must have come from…?

The ruins, up the steps, Onmund ran, searching for the tell-tale red hair. There she was, not joining in the fray, but slumped against the burnished door. She still wore the ragged robes of a prisoner and she was pale as snow in Evening Star.

“Elie. Elie. Elie. Elie.” He held her to him but she didn’t return the embrace, only slumped listlessly against him. “Elie what happened? What did they do to you?”

She didn’t seem to have heard him.

A carriage, the Temple of Kynareth, the buzzing-hum of Restoration magic. 

“She’s lost a lot of blood.” He hears Danica say. But that doesn’t make any sense. She didn’t have a mark on her body.

Danica’s hand finds his shoulder in what he supposes is a comforting gesture. But its  _ not _ because that means he has need of comfort which he  _ doesn’t _ because everything is  _ fine _ . Eliana is going to be  _ fine _ . And they’re going to take a carriage back to Lakeside and live their quiet, happy, just  _ fine _ lives.

“I’ve stopped the hemorrhaging. She’ll need a few days to recover.”

Good, good, that was good. Everything was fine. But if everything was fine, why was Danica still looking at him like that? Like there was still something lost? A reason to grieve?

She hardly speaks on the way back to Lakeview. She is still weak and pale as the carriage bounces over the southward road. He wants to draw her close, find comfort together. She turns away when he reaches for her hand.

She tries to be lively for Sofie. She doesn’t care to work on the house anymore. She sleeps in. She asks Onmund if he would be kind enough to sleep in one of the spare beds for a while. He doesn’t know what to do. He hurts too.

He asks Sofie to tend the garden. He hopes that it will draw Eliana back out. It does. He watches while the sun and soul and air breath life into her again.

Sofie stays behind in Falkreath one day to play with the other children.

Onmund is only a little surprised to find Eliana at work weeding, watering, cultivating, nurturing. She really would have been a wonderful mother.

They stand in the garden. Onmund by Eliana’s side. She takes his hand. 

“Do you hate me?”

“Do I- what?”

“Do you hate me?”

“How could I possibly hate you?”

“For what I did.” A tear falls down her cheek. “For what happened. If I hadn’t gone to Markarth-”

“Elie.” He crosses to her, finds himself kneeling in front of her, arms around her middle. “It wasn’t your fault”. 

“But Danica said the stress-“

“I don’t care what Danica said. Nothing that happened to you was your fault.”

“I didn’t have to help Eltrys. Once I realized why I had been summoned there I could have left and we might- we could have-.” She looked off towards the lake, tears filling her eyes.

“No one can fault you for wanting to help everyone you come across.”

“Onmund,” She dropped to her knees too and let him wrap his arms around her. “ _ I  _ can fault me. Reckless is what it is and I don’t want any part of it anymore.” 

He runs his fingers through her auburn tresses and brings her head to rest on his shoulder. They are quiet for a long while. A hawk circles overhead. 

At last, quietly: “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Before?” She asks against the skin of his neck. He nods mutely. “I was afraid.”

“Of?”

“This. This happening.”

He had though they had known fear. Facing down the creatures of nightmares, armies, death. But this is a new thing entirely that grips her, changes her. Life resumes. They care for Sofie, the garden, the house, and each other. Time marches on but the fear remains.

Two years later, in the spring, Onmund is beside himself with worry, despite assurances that all is progressing as expected. It is the middle of the night, in their bedroom, and Eliana, with all the strength of a Nord warrior, grips his hand so hard he fears the bones will break. Zaria, the redguard woman who runs the alchemy shop in Falkreath, attends her.

Hours and much pain later, Eliana carefully places his son into his arms. Very red and angry and wrinkled, with blue eyes and very sparse dark hair. Onmund is acquainted with new dimensions of fear as Eran grows. He wonders, could he bear it if his precious son grew up and scorned and hated him? If he left, never to be seen again? His own parents were not perfect, but then again neither was he.

Eran is three and Triwenna nearly a year when they meet their grandparents for the first time. It is stiff and awkward but Onmund can tell by the tears shining in his mother’s eyes and the steady grip of his father’s hand that they are grateful. As is he.

Sofie is not jealous of her siblings. She adores them, spends hours playing with them in the yard and down by the lake shore. When they are young she dazzles them with the handful of spells she knows. Years later, she bids them, along with her parents, tearful goodbyes as she and Rayya mount their horses to depart for Winterhold. Sofie goes to study destruction magic and Onmund fusses over her in his letters, worried because she has J’zargo for a professor. 

Onmund and Eliana do not live in blissful domesticity all of the time. There still are, occasionally, dragons to rid from Nirn, bandits, random bounties to collect from Jarls when they grow bored. They go to court occasionally in the larger holds, attend parties and political meetings. They go to the College, to visit Sofie, and see how it is running. There are far, far more students there than there had been in the days Onmund had attended. Winterhold changes as well. With the close association of the famed and beloved Dragonborn with the College, much of the stigma surrounding it was gone from the people of Skyrim. Winterhold looked much more like a proper, functioning city those days that the ruin it had once been.

It has been said that the practice of majicka can extend one’s lifespan. It does. Onmund lives to see his great-grandchildren grown, prospering, and copious. But it is different with Eliana. More than just magic, she is sustained by the hundreds of souls that have defined her life. She does not look much over middle aged when she bends over the bed to push his silver hair out of his eyes. It is not their bedroom in Lakeview, rather they have spent their twilight years in a manor not far from the College. The light is low outside the windows, orange and red casting over the snow, burnishing the world in gold. The Aura Borealis will be apparent tonight, Eliana says. 

As a younger man, Onmund might have worried about dying in a bed. Worried about what world he would cross into when he departed this one. But not now. He was not being run through with a sword, nor burnt by magefire, but he held no uncertainty that he would not die a warrior’s death. For what fight was there greater than the living of one’s own life? And that he had done. And now the sun was setting.

“My love?” His voice is that of an old man, and far away. She clasps his hand to her cheek but she does not cry. Rather, she smiles.

“I shall endeavor not to make you wait too long.” She kisses his weathered palm. He knows what she means. It was decades ago that she began to worry over it, this endless life. And so she had resolved never to take another dragon’s soul, lest she never join him in Sovngarde. 

“My love, take your time. I’ll see you on the other side.”

Three hundred years later the din in the feasting hall quiets as a long-awaited warrior joins her people for the second time. There are many familiar faces there but one who seeks her out more earnestly that all others. And though this written account may come to an end, their story did not. 

~.~


End file.
